Reading Time: 4 minutes So HMS Endurance has been found, nearly two miles below the surface of the Antarctic Ocean, 107 years after it was crushed in sea ice and sunk. When I saw the news, my feet were up, as they tend to be. I was warm, but not too warm. And the unbelievable story of the Endurance […]
History
Exploring history and prehistory from a secular, nonreligious perspective.
Posted inHistory
Morality evolves
Reading Time: 2 minutes Alan Turing’s life is an example of how bigotry in the name of “God’s law” has gradually been dropped.
Posted inYour World, Your Life
The local Arizona news story that haunts my career
Reading Time: 3 minutes The news is … not great. Let’s talk about the olds. Specifically, a story about a story that I covered in my days as a young freelance writer in Arizona. Is this the Arizona that conservatives want? As we approach the 2022 election, Arizona is decidedly a bellwether state. Will it (finally) flip blue? Or […]
Posted inWar and Peace
Remaking the Western goal of peace
Reading Time: 7 minutes In my last three pieces, I explored some of the historical myths, economic complexities, and alternative approaches to peace that we as global humanists need to reckon with in pursuit of a better world. In a pat, self-congratulatory series, this would be where we sum up. This would be where bandaid solutions and vague hopefulness […]
Posted inWar and Peace
Peace lessons from Colombia’s long night of war (and still-arriving dawn)
Reading Time: 7 minutes Sometimes I forget that I used to live in a place where national news didn’t routinely bring me word of an assassinated social leader, or another death related to civil-conflict violence. Colombia is the second-most biodiverse country in the world, and even within specific departments (states) afflicted by cartel and guerrilla violence, there is quite […]
Posted inWar and Peace
The cost of uneasy peace and economic warfare
Reading Time: 7 minutes In recent bouts of economic sanctions against Russia, many average citizens are just now learning about the extent of oil imperialism in their lives. But it’s not simply a matter of countries leveraging energy markets against one another. Oil companies stand gleefully at the ready to boost profits and political positioning even as our governments […]
Posted inWar and Peace
Breaking down Western myths of peace
Reading Time: 7 minutes I’ll never forget my confusion, as a Canadian in Colombia in 2018, when I first visited Museo Casa de la Memoria. In Medellín’s “memory house”, a video explained that Colombia had more history with peace than any other country. I’d been raised to believe in Canada’s strong commitment to “peace, order, and good government.” Surely […]
Posted inHistory
COVID-19 is Boston’s 1721 smallpox epidemic redux
Reading Time: 5 minutes Although the coronavirus pandemic is clearly starting to ebb, as of March 9, 2022 an average of 35,496 Americans were still be being hospitalized daily with the disease, and it’s still killing 1,451 citizens each day on average, the New York Times reported. So, the current pandemic is far from over in the U.S., which […]
Posted inBooks
Babes + booze 4ever: A review of “Girly Drinks” by Mallory O’Meara
Reading Time: 3 minutes When you hear the phrase “girly drinks,” what comes to mind? Probably pink drinks and cosmos, white wine, and sweet fruity stuff. But what if I told you these concoctions are a pretty recent development that actually reflects a centuries-long history of men trying to exclude women from developments in various important aspects of alcohol […]
Posted inHistory
The Ides of March: Is Putin a tyrant?
Reading Time: 3 minutes Senator Lindsey Graham recently called for the murder of Vladimir Putin. He invoked the history of tyrannicide when he asked in a tweet, “Is there a Brutus in Russia?” Critics were outraged. But the logic is simple: If Putin is a tyrant, tyrannicide is a plausible response. To call someone a tyrant implies they are […]